Strategic Decarbonization: Regulatory Drivers, Tools, and Real‑World Execution

The day begins with a big-picture keynote designed to set context for every session that follows—linking policy, performance standards, market signals, and real-world execution into a single narrative: decarbonization is no longer a niche initiative, but an operating condition for the building sector.

Peter Templeton will map the rapidly shifting landscape of requirements, standards, and market expectations shaping building decarbonization today. While highlighting LEED’s evolving role, he will frame it as part of a broader ecosystem of collaboration, aligned resources, and implementation pathways—connecting tools such as Strategic Decarbonization Planning (SDP), the Guide, and the Playbook to the practical decisions owners and project teams must make.

Building Performance Standards are rapidly evolving as a critical policy tool for building decarbonization. This fast-paced session brings together policy leaders, jurisdictional representatives, and industry experts to deliver essential updates on the BPS landscape and its connection to Strategic Decarbonization Planning (SDP).

How can project teams transform their thinking about building decarbonization and generate cogent plans that incorporate long-term flexibility to future-proof their assets? Given the urgent need to reduce building emissions, the Strategic Decarbonization Planning (SDP) framework presents a practical approach to retrofitting buildings that aligns decarbonization activities with typical real estate cycles to cost-effectively achieve deep emissions reductions.

By integrating technical solutions with real estate capital plans and taking advantage of collaborative problem-solving approaches that integrate diverse perspectives, like design charrettes, project teams can develop holistic decarbonization roadmaps for their buildings that prioritize flexibility, reduce risk, and unlock long-term value.

And in a changing regulatory landscape, SDP is a cost-effective approach to building performance compliance in New York City and beyond, now being utilized in numerous

Achieving zero carbon across a national portfolio sounds ambitious, but what happens when you add the complexity of small-scale commercial buildings across all lower 48 states? This session shares the hard-won operational decarbonization lessons from JPMorgan Chase's zero carbon program, one of the most extensive programs in the world, implemented across hundreds of small-footprint projects in partnership with JLL.

The core insight: scalable zero carbon outcomes on small projects happen not project-by-project, but rather at the program level first. We will share a macro-to-micro framework that makes nationwide impact possible.

The session will focus primarily on operational carbon: energy modeling at volume, all-electric design strategies, envelope performance across diverse climates, utility data tracking, and the organizational systems needed to maintain rigor at scale. Audience members will learn about a practical, data-informed playbook for how a development team can build a program-level foundation to drive zero carbon outcomes on small projects, repeatedly and at scale.

New York City's multifamily sector is starting to move. Local Law 97 – NYC’s landmark building emissions law – has arrived and sharpened the urgency. Better data, deeper support programs, and catalytic innovation are starting to make decarbonization more affordable and achievable for owners and operators of all sizes.

This session spotlights what’s working in NYC's multifamily landscape. A data-driven look at multifamily progress sets the stage, followed by an inside view of how the NYC Accelerator is evolving into a sophisticated platform moving buildings from assessment to implementation. Presenters also highlight emerging heat pump technologies changing the cost and energy calculus for retrofits.

Air source heat pumps are the most widely used technology for electrifying buildings, and unfortunately these systems are not invisible. These systems entail the addition of lots of “utilitarian” mechanical equipment and distribution lines (to use a euphemism) to the façade and/or within habitable spaces. If the aesthetics of this equipment is not addressed, it could easily impede the uptake of electrification, since building owners and residents expect their buildings not just to function, but to be pleasant to see and inhabit.

This session will be a moderated panel of architects and industrial designers. The panel will present the aesthetic problems encountered in current electrification projects and discuss how the architectural and industrial design professions are addressing these issues and ways that they could go further. The panelists will present some design solutions for electrification, and some examples of how other emerging technologies have addressed aesthetic issues in the past.

The hardest barrier to decarbonization often isn't a skeptical owner or a missing technical solution, it's the constant pressure to do things the way we've always done them. Our starting point, approach, framing and unstated assumptions all lead to greater carbon emissions, like replacing equipment without considering actual demand or new configurations, trusting rule-of-thumb sizing, or default to design and financial case that worked last time. The pressure comes from inside our own teams and organizations, and it can make a business-as-usual outcome inevitable.

In this session, three diverse organizations talk honestly about projects where status quo pressure won or nearly won, and how the planning process must change to allow better lower-carbon outcomes.

In this closing session, summit experts discuss how the concepts covered in the summit can integrate into day-to-day practice. This summative lecture helps to draw connections between the individual sessions to paint a larger picture of strategic decarbonization within the field.